1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to the field of data and video conferencing. More particularly, this invention relates to associating user information with conference participants during a data and/or video conference.
2. Background
Computer technology is continuously advancing, resulting in modern computer systems which provide ever-increasing performance. One result of this improved performance is an increased use of computer systems by individuals in a wide variety of business, academic and personal applications. One such use is that of data and/or video conferencing, where individuals in different locations can communicate with each other via their computer systems. Typically, data conferencing refers to individuals viewing documents, data, or similar information, and video conferencing refers to individuals viewing images (generally of one another). The different locations can span virtually any distance, such as between multiple offices in the same building or between multiple offices in different countries.
The benefits of data and/or video conferencing are numerous. Among these benefits is the ability of multiple individuals to effectively and quickly communicate information and ideas to one another over large distances. The information and ideas can be displayed by each computer system, and frequently verbal discussions can accompany the images. Data and video can both be transmitted in a conferencing environment.
However, one problem which exists in many current conferencing environments is the ability to provide each individual end user with specific information about the other conferencing participants. For example, the names of the other participants, current pages of documents being viewed by other participants, which application tools are being used by other participants, which other conference participants are sharing particular applications, etc. is all valuable information to conferencing participants. Thus, it would be beneficial to have a mechanism for maintaining and providing such valuable information to conferencing participants.
Additionally, in a conference having several conferencing participants, it is desirable to be able to associate specific controls or commands with individual participants. For example, one conferencing participant may want to send a private message to a second conferencing participant without all of the other participants seeing the message. By way of another example, a conferencing participant may want to transfer a file to one or more, but not to all, other conferencing participants. Thus, it would be beneficial to provide a mechanism for associating specific controls and/or commands with individual conferencing participants.
As will be described in more detail below, the present invention provides for a method and apparatus that achieves these and other desired results which will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the description to follow.